Custer chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, Black Hills, D.T. [S.D.]) 1880-1890, 1887-12-03
THE GOSPEL OF HEALTH.

BROOKLYN, Nov. 20.-Tne Rev. De-
Witt Talmage, ID. ID. opened the SER
vice at the Tabernacle this morning by
giving out the hymn beginning:
''Should coming days be cold and dark,
We need net cease our singing:
That perfect rest nought can molesr,
Where golden harps are ringing"
lie then explained IA passage in the
Gospel of st. Matthew, concerning the
inferior kind of salt that was cast out
to make walks of. to be trodden under
foot of men. The subject Of DR.. Tai
IMAGES discourse was: ''The Gospel OF
Health" and his text was from Prov
.erbs vii. %: I'LL IA dart strike through
his liver" He said:
There is n fashion in ceremonies. A
comparatively small part of the Bible
is called on tor texts. Most of the pas
sages of Scripture, when announced at
the opening of sermons, Immediately
divide themselves into old discussions
that we have heard from boyhood, and
the effect on us is sopOriiic. The aud
itor guesses at the start just what the
preacher will say. There are very inn
portant chapters ard verses that have
never been preached from. Much OF
my lifetime ! am d~cvotiug TO unlock
inc these gold chests and blasting open
these quarries. We talk about the
heart. and preach about the heart, and
sing about the heart, but if YOU refer TO
the physical organ that we call the
heart, it has not half so much to Go
with spiritual health OF disease, moral
eXaltation or spiritual depression, as
the organ to the consideration Of which
solomon calls us in the text, when he
describes sin progressing ''ti!l "a dart
strike through his liver"
sOLOMoN's ANATOMICAL KNOWLEDGE.
Solomon's anatomical and ply sio-
logical discoveries were so very great
that he was nearly three thousand
wears ahead of the scientists of his day.
He, more than one thousand years be-
fore Christ, seemed to know about the
circulation Of the blood, which Harvey
discovered sixteen hundred and nine
teen years after Christ, for when Solo
mon in Ecclesiastes, describing the
human body, speaks of the pitcher at
the fountain, he evidently means the
three canals leading from the heart
that receive the blood like pitchers.
When he speaks in Ecclesiastes of the
silver cord of life. he evidently means
the spinal marrow, about which in our
day doctors Mayo, and Carpenter, and
Dalton, and Flint, and Brown-Sequard
have experimental. And Solomon
recorded in the Bible thousands of
years before scientists discovered il,
that in his time the spinal cord relaxed
in old age, producing the tremors of
hand aud head: "Or the silver cord be
oosed.'
In the text he reveals the fact that
he had studied that largest gland OF
the human system, the liver, not by the
electric light Of the modern dissecting
room, but by the dim light of a com
~paratively dark age, and yet had seen
its important function in the God-built
castle of the human body, its selecting
and secreting power, its curious cells,
its elongated, branching tubes, a divine
workmanship in central, and right,
and left lobe, and the hepatic artery
through which God conducts the crlm-
son tides. On,
THIS VITAL ORGAN
is like the eye of God in that it never
a,y, ~ - a..I III
noticed either in yivisection or post
mortem what awful attacks sin and
dissipation make upon it, until with the
fiat of Almighty God it bids the body
and soul separate, and the one it com
mands TO the grave, aud the other it
sends TO judgment. A %ilvelin of ret
ribution, not glancing oil or making a
slight wound, bit piercing it from side
to side ''tlll the dart strike through the
liver" Galen and Hippocrates ascribe
to the liver the most of the worlds
moral depression, and the word mclan-
choly means black bile.
| preach to YOU this morning the
Gospel OF Health. In taking diagnosis
70 the diseases of the soul you must
also take the diagnosis Of the diseases
of the body. As if to recognize this,
one whole book of the new testament
was written by a physician. Lake was
a doctor and he d~iscOurSes much of
physical effects, and he tells of the
good Samaritan's medication of the
wounds by pouring in oil and wine,
and recognizes hunger as a hlndrance
to hearing the gospel, SO that the 5000
were fed; and records the sparse diet
of the prodigal away from home, and
the extinguished eyesight of the beg
gar by the wiyside, and lets us know
of the hemorrhsgc OF the wounds of
the dying Christ and the miraculous
postmortem resuscitation. And any
estimate of the spiritual condition that
does not include also an estimate Of
the physical condition is incomplete.
When the doorkeeper of congress fell
dead from excessive JOY because Bur-
goyne had surrendered nj Saratoga,
and Phillip the Fifth of Spain dropped
dead at the news of his country's de-
feat in battle, and Cardinal Wolsey ex-
pired as n result of II ury the Eighth's